Supervisory Switching Control of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle

TL;DR

This paper introduces a performance-based supervisory switching control system for unmanned surface vehicles that dynamically switches between three specialized controllers to enhance pose accuracy and system performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel supervisory switching control framework that integrates three different controllers for USVs, improving performance over individual controllers.

Findings

PBSSC mitigates pose errors more effectively than single controllers

Experimental results validate the superiority of the switching system

The method enhances USV control robustness and accuracy

Abstract

A novel method to determine the switching of controllers to increase the performance of a system is presented. Three controllers are utilized to capture three behaviors representative of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). An underactuated nonlinear controller is derived to transit the vehicle between locations; a fully-actuated nonlinear controller is given to station-keep the vehicle at a setpoint; and a linear anti-windup controller is presented for the reversing mode of operation. Given a trajectory to follow, a performance-based supervisory switching control system (PBSSC) dictates the switching between controllers to improve system performance. Experimental results are shown that indicate that the PBSSC system is able to mitigate errors in pose better than any of the individual controllers.